Friday 15 February 2008 05.40 EST
First published on Friday 15 February 2008 05.40 EST

Is it myth or fact that endlessly spirals around the famous "Red Priest" of 18th-century Venice, Antonio Vivaldi? What do we really know of this man's character and music? A number of biographical novels and films recently released or currently under way have used a handful of surviving documents to eroticise Vivaldi's life, but perhaps it's time to revisit the facts.

Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678, the son of a professional violinist. His musical training was with his father but by 1693 he was taking steps to enter the priesthood as well. The year of his ordination, 1703, he was also engaged as music teacher by a home for foundlings, La Pietà, and it is here that the conjecture begins.

From 1703 to 1735, Vivaldi alternately, and at times simultaneously, played the role of music master and composer to the young girls living at La Pietà. Imagining Vivaldi in such a scene of temptation, in a role of both authority and intimacy among these vulnerable young women, has seduced writers and film-makers into fantasising about the erotic potential of the scenario. It is easy to imagine a libidinous red-haired priest exploiting the privileges of the cloth, in an institution that even 17th- and 18th-century visitors described with thinly veiled salaciousness. For the record, we know he had red hair, wore a habit and suffered from asthma, for which he was excused from having to recite mass. As to illicit affairs, we have nothing to go on.

A better documented trail leads to Vivaldi's muse, Anna Giro. In 1724, this promising young singer and her elder half-sister, acting as chaperone, moved in with Vivaldi. Anna first sang in one of Vivaldi's operas in 1726 and appeared in nearly all his operas after that. She was closely affiliated with him until the end of his life. Again, the titillating image of a "loose" priest comes up. In truth, this arrangement may not have been so shocking in an age in which priests traditionally maintained a life-long, live-in "perpetua" - a woman who dedicated her time to the priest as cook, house cleaner and general companion. But Anna held a special place in Vivaldi's heart; in opera after opera he wrote roles specifically for her, moulding the music to her particular vocal strengths and weaknesses. No other singer received such consistent attention and privilege from the composer. In 1738 Vivaldi was refused entrance to the city of Ferrara where his opera Farnace was to be performed. The city's new cardinal was making a moral point - his disapproval of a priest involved in the frivolities of the operatic world and living under the same roof as a female singer. But Vivaldi consistently denied any wrongdoing.

These are the scant facts we have to go on, and the basis for contemporary biographies. Looking further, an idea of Vivaldi's personality can be pieced together through a scattering of quotes by his contemporaries. Fully aware of his own exceptional talent, he was said to be proud, vain and quick to boast of his speed of composition. He was also sensitive to criticism, obsessed with money and volatile, but at the same time possessed a zest and enthusiasm that earned the admiration of those who knew him. The Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni has left us a vivid description of his first meeting with Vivaldi in 1735. He arrived to find the composer engrossed in meditational reading and describes him clutching his missal throughout the interview - signs of, at the very least, a modicum of religious conviction. To this should be added that Vivaldi signed many of his music scores, especially but not exclusively the operas and sacred music, with an extravagant dedication to the Virgin Mary.

Finally, we have the phenomenal amount of music Vivaldi left: hundreds of concertos and endless pages of sacred music. From 1710, Vivaldi was pre-eminently a composer for the stage, writing some 50 operas; though fewer than 20 have remained intact, this is enough to show that they represented his ultimate passion and greatest achievement.

To most people, Vivaldi is synonymous with one masterwork, The Four Seasons. To be sure, this is a great piece and one of the earliest and finest instances of programme music, but the elements that make it so attractive - syncopation, quick rhythms and harmonic changes coupled with highly expressive melodies - can be found in 500 other of his concertos. The celebrated phrase insinuating that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto hundreds of times (said to have been coined by Dallapiccola, repeated by Stravinsky and echoed thereafter) ought perhaps to be construed positively. This is a composer with a marked style, true, but gifted with the ability to infinitely vary his eloquent melodies and harmonic sequences.

The Vivaldi Edition, a 15-year project to record the immense quantity of his music, and of which I am director, has set out to create a complete aural documentation of it all. When the project is completed, more than 100 titles will have been released in recordings that reflect interpretations by many of today's most eminent performers, combined with the research of leading scholars. It is here, in his greatest legacy, the music, that further clues into Vivaldi's intriguing character may be found and, I dare say, the greatest pleasure derived.

It is the less well-known and more recently discovered operas that are perhaps the most revealing of his works. With the lyrics providing the emotional setting, Vivaldi, a consummate word painter, expresses pathos, fury, madness, longing and love with striking emotional force. All this can be heard in his 1719 opera Tito Manlio, which gets a rare performance under Ottavio Dantone in London on February 19. At first, sit back, close your eyes and listen to the arias. Should you lack the will to delve into the convoluted text in an attempt to discern who's who in the thick plot of cross-dressing and couple-swapping, have no fear; at this early stage in the history of opera, you can go without. Let the music guide you to your own conclusion as to what kind of man Vivaldi was. What you will find is music with an infectious joie de vivre and an emotional depth that has an exhilarating impact on the listener every time.